Page:Code Swaraj - Carl Malamud - Sam Pitroda.djvu/129

Note on Code Swaraj As the courts have pointed out in the past, these standards are not only meant to become the law, when they do become the law it is because their industry members helped write the law. The big money is not in selling a few documents, the big money is in the shield that industry gets by saying “we comply with the law.”

There is another example of big money, and this demonstrates clearly why the standards bodies don't actually need the money, they have become simply greedy. Or, as Ross Perot so colorfully put it in describing another batch of overpaid and lazy executives, they had become “fat, happy, and a little bit stupid.” The American National Standards Institute, like all the other standards bodies, is registered as a certified nongovernmental charity with the Internal Revenue Service. They brought in $44.2 million in revenue in 2015. Millions of dollars of that revenue go to compensate a few senior managers. The CEO makes over $2 million in yearly salary, and all the senior managers list themselves as working a 35-hour work week. Likewise, the National Fire Protection Association not only paid over $1 million per year to their last CEO, when he retired they gave him a $4 million retirement check.

These are very rich pay packages for a charity. They've put money over mission, have lost their sense of service. Let me be clear about one thing, however: many of these organizations put out very high-quality codes and standards. They do incredible substanative work, but this work is all being done by dedicated volunteers, not overpaid executives in the back office. Nobody gets paid to write the National Electrical Code, it is created out of a sense of professional and public service by thousands of volunteers, including a large number of dedicated federal, state, and local employees.

I must be clear that at this point in my legal battles, most of the heavy lifting is being done by the law firms that represent Public Resource. I, of course, have to read all the briefs, and I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to educate myself about legal procedure and the merits of my case. Particularly when we were going through the intense process of discovery and depositions, I was intensely involved, which is of course not always a good thing. As a non-lawyer (I dropped out of Georgetown Law School after completing my first year), I can drive my lawyers crazy with stupid questions and my lack of experience. But, because I do know the facts of my case and I work hard, they tolerate me.